Yes! I have had the same experience with Wendy's! It is one of the few fast food places I really like, but they get my order WRONG probably 35% of the time! VERY irritating! I'm a man who is VERY particular about my cheeseburgers, and what I want on them!

So, about two years ago, when I saw an editorial by the CEO of Wendy's in The Wall Street Journal, about the minimum wage, I read it with great interest, and practically ERUPTED after reading it. He was warning that if the minimum wage was raised, he would replace all of his order-takers with automated kiosks. And my reaction was: YES! I WANT you to do that!! So you just made a GOOD argument in FAVOR of raising the minimum wage, pal!

I wrote a letter to the editor of the WSJ to that effect, but they didn't print it, of course----even though I was an economics professor. That and a buck won't even get you a coffee at Starbucks.

LOL your thinking is that the kiosk would get your freaking order correctly?

It's not about it being new technology. When I do business, it's going to be face to face. Plus the fact that they are taking jobs away from people just to increase their bottom line. No I won't be using them.

There is something going around on social media to refuse to use self check out machines at grocery stores and I am participating even if it means taking longer to wait for the (sometimes only one) lane with a person. The idea being that if enough people do this, it will save the lanes with cashiers. Worth a try.

Wow. There are LOTS of large companies that pay everyone MORE than double the minimum wage. Most often, they are high-tech companies, like Google, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Intel, etc. You think folks that work at those places are making minimum wage?!??

Kiosks are a novelty. Based on the fact that we've had self-checkout lanes in supermarkets for two decades, and supermarkets still have plenty of humans operating the registers, I don't see fast-food going in a different direction.

Don't forget - unlike a kiosk, a human cashier can be asked to mop a floor, take out the garbage, make a burger, or refill a napkin dispenser. No robot remotely approaches that level of versatility.

It will be a long time before a robot is as versatile as a sixteen year-old kid. We have some DAMN impressive robots out there - but nearly all of them are single-function. The most advanced surgical robots on earth can't (for example) scoop ice cream. Those ambulatory running-robots you see in videos are incapable of stacking boxes, or extracting one foot of duct tape from a spool.

In one afternoon, you can train a human to perform pretty much every common work task in a fast-food restaurant.

Our minimum wage won't even support bare subsistence living. What the hell's the point of working full time if the pay won't even feed you and put a roof over your head? We have practically outlawed labor unions, so workers here have no opportunity to bargain for fair wages. We instituted a minimum wage after the Great Depression because it had become obvious that market forces don't work for keeping wage rates equal to inflation.

It was attitudes like yours that caused the Great Depression to begin with.

Currently, 51 million Americans can't afford the basics despite having a minimum wage since July 2009. More companies struggle to pay it so they look towards automation.

Take a company, it runs on a productivity of say 10%. So it takes it's turnover and it's maximum wage budget is 10% of that. By all means shove the minimum up, but it's wage budget is still 10% of turnover. As profit margins are hit, it tries to reduce down to 7% productivity. As full time staff leave, part time on less hours are employed. The company saves money on taxation. As the minimum wage increases again, the company employs less staff. As minimum wage increases again, what can companies do? They lay staff off and sub contract work out. Those that can't look for efficiencies, like supermarkets and self serve tills, Amazon shops with no staff, supermarkets with card only fuel pumps with no staff and so on.

It's working out really well, really really well.

(That company with that productivity exists in the UK, I used to work for them.)

Starting up a small company is not simple, and £5.40 per hour is not enough to cover the most basic living expenses. That's what Minimum Wage is in the US.

Precisely, starting up and running a company is not simple. So add an extra burden on them and tell them how much they have to pay out on wages. The only reason the current level of wage is not sufficient is due to the current level of taxation everyone is paying.